You make it sound like Renault were surprised that they had to modify the car for C spec.

That is obviously not true. Engines are on testbenches months before they are signed off. They knew they had to adapt the engine problaby 3-4 months before C spec was finalised.

Cmon, they are not stupid. They were aware of this much earlier than RB an Mc. Probably bigger gains were predicted from spec c, but they could not reach it (with the required level reliability) and spec c delivered only 2-3 tenths reliably. Then they had to choose. And they sticked to spec b as we all know.

Then why did they built spec C at all?
Its millions, literally, spent on building, validating, producing spec C ...
Its either spec C didn't deliver as expected, or... we should believe that in France "Noblesse oblige"Yea, right...
And btw, Ghosn was pro-F1 envolvement... I guess we have to wait & see, but how good or bad is 2019 may decide the faith of RenaultF1 team.

Because they expected a bit more juice from it.

Developing current hybrid F1 PU is not for small workshops. Investments are incredible. Or more.

Maybe the limits of spec c helped to improve this year's PU. So that money was not necessarily dropped out of the window.

If you are surprised that PU manufacturers are continuously developing and sometimes they don't reach they targets (which happened frequently in case of Renault in the past - but this doesn't mean they will always deliver pos PUs, hopefully they have something really good in their pocket for 2019), then it's your problem.

Because it's fake and doesnt have any purpose whatsoever. I'd rather wait to see actual car even if I need wait week longer to hit a track. Sick of frankenstein assembled cars or CGI'd cars which looks nothing like real car when it hits a track. Like I said I dont mind waiting.

Marketing dept probably don't think it has no purpose lol.

These launches are for news articles going out to the masses of millions, not the few F1 forum geeks.

Livery is almost the same as last years with some differences on the wings. That front wing looks a lot more detailed than on any of the other cars so far. And it looks like they’ve adopted the ferrari style air intakes on the side high enough to clear the suspension. Beyond that my eyes are not well trained enough to pick out the differences.